


Therapy

by RosyPages



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Klaus whump, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 20:59:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18080816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosyPages/pseuds/RosyPages
Summary: From the Ask: "I have a head-cannon that Vanya at least tried to get all of her siblings to go to therapy after she realized how much it was helping her. I dunno if any would (probably not) but I full heatedly believe that Vanya at least tried."Aka. Vanya tries therapy and it works for her. Over the years she tries to convince her siblings to try it too, with little success.Luther struggles with being abandoned by his siblings, Allison struggles with starting a new life, Diego is just angry, and Klaus tries to convince her he isn't crazy. Vanya just wants to help.This takes place before the show, so Ben is dead and Five is still missing.





	Therapy

**Vanya**

Vanya started therapy a year after she left home.

She’d spent months wracked with guilt over abandoning her siblings, months waking mid-panic-attack, screaming Ben’s name. She couldn’t move forward but she wouldn’t go back, so she waited in limbo, jumping between crappy- minimum- wage jobs and babysitting gigs. She waited in fear for Hargreeves to appear and drag her back home, she waited for the call telling her Klaus had overdosed or Diego had taken a bullet or whatever the next horror from home would be that’d send her spinning out of control again. She had woken up in the middle of the night, more times than she could count, and made a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich to wait for Five to come home. Those nights were the worst.

It took a year for her to realize that no one was going to force her to go back home. The realization should’ve come as a relief. Nothing waited for her back home. She couldn’t take another second of empty hallways and dreading the next mission that would end with another missing sibling.

Instead she was drowning in loneliness, in depression, knowing that they hadn’t even noticed she had gone.

Vanya felt herself fading. Sometimes she wondered if the people on the street even noticed her. She found herself trying to make eye contact with strangers, silently begging for them to say a word, to look at her, anything. The day she broke down crying when her landlady wished her a good afternoon was the day she decided to find a therapist.

It had been hard, at first. Every session would end in tears. She felt wrung out, exhausted, laid bare… After every session she had to force herself not to quit, if only out of spite. She had promised herself she would get better.

Two months after she started, she spent an entire night without nightmares. A month after that, she found herself humming a song and baking a cake in her shitty kitchen. She’d ended up burning it, but she’d also never felt lighter. Five months in, her therapist had convinced her to pick up the violin again. After that, her life just fell into place. It wasn’t perfect, and it never would be. But she found a place in an orchestra and she made extra money teaching children how to play. She had her own apartment. She had peace. And that was more than she had ever had with Hargreeves.

**Luther**

Luther, Vanya saw only once, when she had stopped by the house to pick up a couple pieces of clothing she had forgotten. It’d taken her two years to work up the courage. He’d looked so lost and lonely, forgotten by everyone, including Reginald. They had shared small talk, and it spoke volumes about how willing he was to chat with her. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d willingly spoken to her before she’d moved out.

He told her that the rest of their siblings had followed Vanya and moved out shortly after her departure. Klaus had been the first, although he hadn’t so much “moved out” as just never came back after sneaking out for a night of drugs or drinking or whatever the hell he did. His stuff was still in his room and Luther was pretty sure he hadn’t taken a bag with him. Diego had left soon after realizing Klaus wasn’t going to come back. Vanya was surprised he hadn’t tried contacting her, but then again, Diego was as much a soldier as Luther. Nothing could distract him from his mission, even a potential friend. Especially his useless sister. Then Allison had left, and Vanya could see the fresh hurt still lurking in Luther’s eyes.

She brought up her therapy and he seemed to show enough interest that she gave him the office’s number, encouraging him to give them a call. She knew he wouldn’t though when Reginald came walking down the hall and he stuffed the piece of paper deep into his jacket. He needn’t have bothered though. Hargreeves hadn’t spared either of them a glance.

**Allison**

Allison had called with the news of her engagement almost three years after Vanya had left home. They hadn’t spoken since Ben’s funeral and Vanya had been surprised that her sister had thought to call her. She hadn’t even known Allison had her number.

They talked for a little, and it was awkward because they had never been close to begin with. The conversation centred mostly around Allison. She’d picked up some acting work. The fiancé’s name was Patrick. She loved him because he was famous and good looking, and the tabloids thought they went well together. Neither of them mentioned Luther. It was like the last twenty years of their lives had never happened.

And then Vanya mentioned therapy. She hadn’t meant to start an argument, but she’d remembered how much she had struggled, and how lost Luther had looked…Allison had been planning on starting a new life, after all, and Vanya had thought that maybe she could help herself before she got married.

“You need to start living without your powers, if you want a normal life like this.”

“What the hell do you know, Vanya? You don’t have any. There’s nothing special about you.”

The conversation ended very quickly, and Vanya hadn’t heard from her again until Claire was born.

**Diego**

Diego was angry at her. All her siblings were after the whole book fiasco, but it was Diego who was taking it the hardest. They had been getting along so well the past couple of years. Diego had reached out with news that he was planning on joining the police academy. He’d wanted her help with the whole “normal life thing” and Vanya had been all too happy to accept his offer of friendship. She’d missed her family.

But then the book had been released, and Diego had stopped talking to her.

So, Vanya had decided to make it right by picking up some bagels and going to his apartment (basement? Room?). It hadn’t gone well.

“Who the hell gave you the right, Vanya?” he’d screamed, tossing a knife from hand to hand as if forcing himself not to throw it.

“It was my life too-”

“No, no, it was our life. Why do you get to tell the world I was, oh let me see here, “never good enough in our fathers eyes” and, look here, “… a failure next to 0.01…” and-”

“You’re taking that out of context, Diego!”

“Am I?”

“Yes! You know I don’t think you’re a failure. But… you know, Dad always-”

“This isn’t about Dad, Vanya. This is about you. You don’t get to tell the world I wasn’t good enough.”

“Diego, you’re good enough. You are. I just meant that in your own eyes, you’re not good enough. Wait, I didn’t mean-”

But a knife was already flying towards her head. It was only because she’d lived with Diego for seventeen years that she didn’t flinched as it flew past her face.

Vanya took a steadying breath, and said, “Maybe this isn’t about the book… I just said what I we all knew, Diego. Dad was never fair to you. And I know you carry it with you. Maybe you should talk to someone who can help you-”

He was already forcing her out the door before she could finish her sentence.

**Klaus**

Vanya found Klaus six years after they moved out, and seven years before the death of their father. He was slouched against a wall in the streets, dressed in feathers and lace. She almost didn’t recognize him, except he yelled out “Vanya!” so loud half the street stopped to stare.

“Klaus?”

That was the beginning of their friendship. It was strange, because they’d never had much of a relationship living with each other. Klaus had been closer with Ben and Diego. Vanya had been happy with Five, for a while, before he’d disappeared and left her with no one. But by that time Klaus had already started smoking and drinking, and Ben had been happy to ignore the world in favour of books, and Diego hadn’t been keen to socialize with any of them.

Klaus had started showing up at her house after their first meeting, although she never remembered giving him her address or telling him where she kept the spare key. She’d just walk in and find him sitting on the couch, waiting.

She never knew how to treat him. She knew he wasn’t crazy. He just saw dead people, and that wasn’t even the weirdest part of her life. But seeing him… well he was gaunt, pale, shaky. His eyes were dim, the familiar spark of joy and humour almost gone, and he kept talking to the air even though she knew the drugs were supposed to stop his powers.

She made sure to feed him up whenever she could and pile him up with warm clothing because he was never wearing enough layers. He rarely even had shoes on. Sometimes she’d ask him to stay. She didn’t care about the drugs, she just wanted to know he had a roof over his head. He’d always decline and make a joke and change the subject. She was afraid that if she pushed, he’d never come back.

But then one day she came back to her apartment after a particularly gruelling therapy session to find Klaus on her couch in floods of tears.

He had a spiderweb of cuts across his temple and glass in his hair, and his eyeliner was running down his face.

She grabbed the first aid kit and sat down next to him. He was quiet as she dabbed rubbing alcohol on the cuts. She’d never seen him so withdrawn before.

“What happened?”

He shrugged at her. Still no words.

“Klaus…”

“I just… I don’t remember much.” His voice was worn and scratchy. Like he’d been screaming. “I don’t know, Vanya. I think we were at someone’s house.”

“We?”

“Me and Ben.”

Vanya’s heart seized in her chest. _Ben_. She hadn’t heard that name in a while. There had been an unsaid agreement between the siblings since his funeral. They didn’t talk about Ben. “Klaus,” she said, carefully, “Ben’s been dead for six years now.”

“Yes, I know that Vanya,” he said, managing to sound annoyed even with his croaky voice. “I know that.”

She didn’t understand. He wasn’t supposed to be seeing the dead while high, and she was pretty sure he hadn’t been sober for at least a decade. She didn’t ask for more details… she didn’t think she wanted to know.

Klaus kept talking. “They were so loud Vanya. I kept taking the pills, but they wouldn’t be quiet.”

“Who?”

But his eyes were far away, and he was shaking so hard the couch was shuddering underneath her.

“They were so loud, and they were screaming at me. It was so dark. And then I think these men came, and they weren’t dead, they were trying to kick me out, but all I could see was the dead faces, and the screaming… I don’t know what happened, Vanya.”

His breath was coming out in fast pants. She put her hand on his back, trying to sooth him, but he flinched away.

“Klaus,” she started, suddenly very unsure. She knew how to patch up a few cuts and scrapes, she didn’t know how to fix… whatever this was. “Klaus… maybe you should see someone. Someone who can help, like a doctor, or-”

It wasn’t the right thing to say. His eyes narrowed and his breath caught in his throat so violently she thought he was choking. “I’m not crazy.”

“I didn’t say that-”

“You didn’t have to.”

He stood up, legs trembling beneath him, breathing still coming out in shuddery breaths. He seemed to wave someone off, someone she couldn’t see, and before she could say anything more, he was gone, slamming the door behind him.

The next time she saw him, he was high as a kite and wearing Allison’s skirt while stealing their dead father’s alcohol. He was too skinny and too pale, and spark was gone from his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy.  
> (For those of you who read it, I promise to update The Dead Aren't Good Company soon.)
> 
> Please leave a comment. <3


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